As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Friday, 22 July 2016

Rare terns spotted around Penghu

By Liu Yu-ching and William
Hetherington / Staff reporter, with staff writer

Birdwatching season is in full
swing in Penghu County and endangered Chinese crested terns can be seen nesting
now, the Penghu Association for the Study of Wild Birds said.

The tern is critically
endangered, with only 50 of the birds thought to be left.

The association said every year
from March to September, six types of seabirds — brown noddy, bridled tern,
greater crested tern, black-naped tern, little tern and roseate tern — can be
seen on the shores of Penghu’s islands.

The appearance of the rare
Chinese crested tern this year has been causing a stir, it said.

Penghu is an ideal environment
for Chinese terns to lay their eggs because only 20 percent of the
archipelago’s 90 islands and islets are permanently inhabited, the association
said.

The birds nest in Penghu in
summer and then migrate to the Philippines in the winter, it said.